I just bought Hub and Scout system. I am able to hook up Hub just fine, but having trouble getting Scout to work. This is what I have done so far.

I have DSL and phone in each of the jacks in the entire house. I am in the process of porting my number, but for the time being I have a temp number from Ooma. My previous phone carrier has separated phone and DSL for me and I am not getting any dial-tone from my previous carrier.

In one room, say room A, I have the DSL modem and my desktop connected there. Obviously I ended up in hooking up my Ooma hub in there. The ethernet port on Ooma connected to the DSL modem and the phone port on Ooma hub connected to a phone. I got the dial tone on the phone just fine.

Now it was time to distribute the dial tone to the entire house. So I disconnected the phone and connected the Ooma Hub phone port to the wall jack (actually in the phone side of the DSL/phone splitter provided by my DSL carrier). I got the dial tone in all the jacks throughout the house.

Now I hooked up my phone in the jack in say room B (again in the phone side of the DSL/phone splitter), and sure enough I got the dial tone.

Now I would like to hook up the scout in room B. So I disconnected the phone and hooked up the scout at the port labelled wall, and connected the phone to the scout at the port labelled phone. Unfortunately scout powers up but the red lights stop at the 4 lower lights (voice mail play buttons) all solid red.

What am I doing wrong? Please help.

Last edited by shah123 on Fri Feb 12, 2010 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The wall port of the hub must be connected to the wall port of the scout and there can't be a DSL signal on the wires that make the connection. If possible use a different pair of wires (line 2) in your walls to make that connection.

Customer since January 2009Telo with 2 Handsets, a Linx, and a Safety PhoneTelo2 with 2 Handsets and a Linx

Initially I had connected wall port on the hub to the wall but that did not distribute the dial tone to the house. But when I connected phone port on hub to the wall jack I was able to get the dial tone on the other jacks.

Also I am not sure what you mean by "there can't be DSL signal on the wires"? In my house every jack has DSL and phone both. Internally I believe it is two different set of wires. Is that not typical? Would this not work? Please help.

You must remove the DSL signal from the wires that you use to connect the wall ports of the two devices together. The wall port of the hub does not provide dial tone. You can use a standard splitter (one came in the box) to connect the wall port of the hub and the phone port of the hub to your wall jack. You then connect the wall port of the scout to a wall jack elsewhere in the house and connect another phone to the phone port of the scout.

The problem is that you must get the DSL signal off of those wires because DSL and the HPNA that the hub and scout use to communicate are not compatible.

The recommendation is to split the DSL signal off of the wire where it comes into the house and run it only to the wall jack where you connect the DSL modem and no place else.

Customer since January 2009Telo with 2 Handsets, a Linx, and a Safety PhoneTelo2 with 2 Handsets and a Linx

So what you are saying is that even though I have DSL and phone on two different set of wires I will still need to get the DSL off of the set so these two set of wires can be used for HPNA and the phone (one set for HPNA instead of DSL and the other for the phone)? If that's the case then I don't think I will be able to use the scout.

Because first off I don't think I have any easy access to the wires entering into the house, and secondly I have no idea how I can disconnect DSL and route it only to the jack I need my DSL modem to be hooked up to.

And that's really bad, because room A is up-stairs and the hub being there has all the indication of voice mail and obviously I would like to be able to know if I have any pending voice mail as soon as I get home without going upstairs. That's why I wanted the scout to be set up downstairs.

Traditionally landline and DSL service run on the same "pair" of wires. House hold phone wiring has 2 "pairs", total of 4 wires, a "pair" is required for a "line".

I believe you said you still have landline service untill after the PORT is completed. Additioanlly I assume you do NOT have your Ooma integrated with your landline, I believe you said you have a temp Ooma number.

So I assume your landline and DSL is on the same pair, this would also mean that you use "filters" for your landline phone. This would mean that you have a unused pair in your jacks, all that you need to do is disconnect the uneeded landline and DSL pair at the jack and rewire to use the "secondary" pair, also to the same at the "other' wall jack thus creating a connection between those two (or however many) jacks.

NOTE I highly recommend you disconnect this second pair of wires from the telco box outside as a precaution to avoid any other issues however unlikely.

Also note, I assume the HUB is the same as the Telo where the basicly the phone jack only has one pair, on a truly full flegged home phone line there are normally 2 pairs (4 wires), but these systems are only capable to use the primary pair in the jack.

Now if you landline and DSL is on seperate "pairs" then you wont be able to use the ouse wiring untill you get rid of your landline to do above.

Also make a "note" to document the changes for future referrence, to save someone pulling their hair out of their head.

First thing, this is what happened with my phone service. My landline has been disconnected from some "box" somewhere so that I don't get the dial-tone anymore. However my account is still active so that I don't lose the phone number before Ooma can switch the phone service over. So I don't have any landline phone signal coming in my house anymore, but if I call my landline phone number from my cell phone it rings forever.

Secondly I was provided with these filters (look like splitter but with DSL and phone marked at the two output jacks) from the DSL service provider. And according to you this means that I have DSL and phone signal riding on the same pair. Correct?

What my understanding was that my DSL and landline phone service were on two different lines or pairs. But apparently that's not correct. That's very good information.

What I have been doing all this time is that in order to get the Ooma scout connected to the hub I have been hooking up the wall port on the Ooma Hub into the jack on the filter labelled Phone. This means that I have been feeding the HPNA signals right into DSL and that's not going to work.

Now that means as per your suggestion I will have to disconnect the DSL/landline pair from the jack and connect the unused pair in there. Does this assume that I don't have the other pair already connected to the jack. Is that typical? I do see a about 4 lines on the jack from outside so the jack could have been wired for both the pairs?? The reason I am asking is that if I already have the pairs connected so I can buy some kind of two-way splitter that I could use to separate the pairs and hook up the wall port of the hub there and then do the same on the other jack in room B and hook up the scout there. Any input? I don't know if they make this kind of splitter though.

Yes they do! There was in fact another thread around here that suggested the existence of splitter to do the same easy solution. Note as you know its not your normal splitter where it shars the same line, you want a splitter that actually splits line 1 and 2 for different devices. The splitters look similar!

The "second" pair is conntected to that jack to be used as a "line 2'". Just some background if you look at telephone wiring is 2 pair (4 wires), however since normally everyone has one line systems to save cost you start to see extension wiring with only 1 pair (2 wires). Hense our Ooma boxes also have this 1 pair to use the "primary" jack wiring. Some 2 line systems can use a single wire with 2 pairs (4 wires) to feed both lines. And this is at the source of your issue. I hope you can follow and I am not confusing you. It seems your on the right track.

More info, since you had your landline "disconnected", you no longer need the filters as that was needed for the phone. There is one filter/spliter which is made in the event the phone needs to share the sam ejack os the DSL modem, so one side is filtered for a handset and the other is not.

So its safe to say we have our asumptions correct espicially if this was the case before Ooma and before you had the landline "unwired", that your home phones were on the same primary pair as your DSL.

More over now that it comes to mind, did you plan to have your DSL "dry looped", aka you seperated your DSL from your landline number account (if it was on the same account aka your landline number), it has been said Verizon does this automatically, but some others such as ATT do not and you RISK having your DSL disconnected when the PORT completes.

Last edited by amoney on Sat Feb 13, 2010 8:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

And yes I have already got the DSL changed to dry-loop, so my side is all ready to go and I have already submitted the number porting order and LOA, and now I have got an email from Ooma asking me to fax a signed copy of LOA and the recent bill. So I am about to do that.

Anyway, I think I already have an A/B splitter. Unfortunately I would need two of them to be able to test out if it works.

However in the meantime I was thinking of another solution. I was thinking if it is possible to get a wireless device that would connect to my wireless router (which is connected to DSL/internet). And behind that device there should be ethernet ports to hook up devices like Ooma hub. In other words that device would wirelessly bring ethernet ports down on the first floor (where I was trying to hook up my scout since my DSL modem is upstairs, so that I could access voicemail on first floor), and I could hook up Ooma hub behind it and I will have indication of new voice mail and access to the voice mail right here on the first floor. Initially I thought a wireless access point should do the trick, but it turns out that it won't work. After some more research I found out that a wireless bridge should do exactly that. This way I won't even need the scout, since the only purpose of using the scout was to be able to get the indication of pending voice mail on first floor.

So I went ahead and ordered one for $26. I would recover this cost by selling scout since I won't need it anymore.